The House of cronies

Thursday 17 January 2002 00:00 BST

Evening Standard editorial comment

The Government's proposals for the revised House of Lords are virtually without support, in Parliament or the country. The lack of headway made over such an overdue reform after five years in office is assuming scandalous proportions. It represents more than a failure of New Labour, it is a failure of the political class. The root of the problem lies in our lack of non-political machinery for effecting constitutional change. Neither main party has shown itself capable of rising to the occasion by putting the future of Parliament above narrow partisan interest.

Labour and Tories share blame for the current impasse. In 18 years of power, the Conservatives found it useful to perpetuate an indefensible system, whereby an Upper Chamber dominated by hereditary peers did broadly as it was told. The same Party is now proposing a far larger elected element in the reformed Chamber. Tactically, Mr Iain Duncan Smith's proposals have gained him an advantage over Labour. They are visibly more democratic than Tony Blair's plan for a "House of Cronies".

But the Tory leader's ideas have deepened divisions within his own party. Meanwhile, New Labour's bad faith is palpable. It is scarcely surprising that the Lord Chancellor is held in such low esteem everywhere outside Downing Street, when his best shot at designing a modernised House of Lords is to create a Second Chamber dominated by people who will get there by appealing to the personal favour of the Prime Minister, in a manner not much morally advanced from the bad old days when the fastest route to the House of Lords was for a man to persuade his wife to sleep with the sovereign.

Mr Blair often laments the cynicism of the electorate towards the political process. What could be more cynical than for a Prime Minister to rig a reform of Parliament so as to allow him to appoint even more placemen than he has already, whom he will employ further to stifle dissent from his government's measures?

Something to hide

This week, the foot-and-mouth epidemic was officially declared over by the Government. The Prime Minister clearly hopes that the public will breathe a sigh of relief and then forget the catastrophe that struck the British countryside when the first case of the disease was confirmed 11 months ago. That, however, must not be allowed to happen. It was the worst foot-and-mouth outbreak the world, not just Britain, has ever seen. There were more than 2,000 cases dispersed around many parts of the country. Some four million animals were slaughtered. It traumatised almost every rural community in the land, cost the British economy many millions in compensation to farmers and lost exports, and dealt the tourism industry a blow as severe as the one it received on 11 September.

If we are to avoid a disaster of similar proportions in future, it is vital that we learn the lessons of the last year. For example, was the slaughter policy right and, if so, was it implemented in the most efficient way? Should a widescale vaccination programme have been adopted instead? These serious questions about how the crisis was handled must be asked honestly and openly if the public is to have any confidence in the answers. Yet, as so often, New Labour gives the impression that it is far more concerned with sidestepping criticism of its ministers than with getting at the truth or promoting a sensible discussion.

The Government is storing up more problems for itself by refusing to hold an independent public inquiry into foot-and-mouth. Its insistence on setting up three investigations into separate aspects of the epidemic, each hearing evidence in private, smells of a political fix designed to get ministers off the hook. The Government's argument that a public inquiry would be too expensive is grotesque in a week when it was revealed that the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday nearly 30 years ago has cost the taxpayer £100 million.

Rightly or wrongly, ministers give the impression that they are putting their own political interests above those of the public and that they have something to hide about their handling of foot-andmouth. We need a full inquiry not to provide ammunition in a search for political scapegoats, but in order to ensure that the country learns the right lessons, to ensure we do not make the same mistakes again.